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Monthly Archives: May 2013

This is an extended blurb for a new “anthology” from Phoenix Fire. Authors not yet announced.

I scarcely know where to start.

First, the picture is a farce. The blood on the guy’s face is smeared, yet there are no smears on the poor victim’s neck. And the holes in her neck are big enough to drive a mack truck through. It’s completely ridiculous.

One of the quickest ways to lose me as a reader is to improperly use the three periods of death. In the first instance, there should be a period and the start of a new sentence. Same with the second and third. The fourth should be a comma. The fifth shouldn’t even be there. Well, none of them should. But again, the sixth should be a period ending the sentence.

That’s right, kids. They use the three periods of death six times in two paragraphs.

And let’s take a look at those paragraphs. In both of them, the “writer” uses both an excerpt, then jumps straight into a laughably poorly written teaser. That’s such poor writing and editing that any proper author, publisher or editor would be embarrassed to be caught within a mile of it. The excerpt isn’t even good enough to be called bad smut. It can’t even be called masturbatory, as the only thing being stroked is the writer’s own delusion that she’s a writer of any merit whatsoever.

It will not surprise me in the least when the authors’s names are released and they all turn out to be Tabetha Jones aliases.

IF both an excerpt and teaser must be included in a blurb, the proper way to go about it is to have the excerpt first, then a second paragraph for the teaser- though nothing on that page teases anything but my gag reflex. And not in a good way, if you catch my drift.

The line “Scarlet Sins will you with a throbbing between your thighs, wishing it was a set of fangs buried deep within.” is not only piss-poorly written, it’s incomplete. Scarlet Sins will WHAT you with a throbbing? Leave you? Or leave you wanting? As with anything that issues forth from that fraud, I expect nothing but the latter. Leaves you wanting real literature, an amnesia pill, or, more likely, an overdose of Dramamine.

If you’re looking for something to read, you’d do better to pick up the nearest bottle of shampoo and peruse the ingredients.

If you’re looking for a publisher, your better interests would be served by doing it yourself or finding a real publisher. Write queries. Submit works to contests. Use Amazon’s Createspace. That’s what PF does with your work. The only thing you’ll get by subjecting your work and career to Phoenix Fire is disappointment. Your reputation will suffer by association and your wallet will be left picked clean for services you can do yourself for free.

Writer, beware. No, I mean it. Phoenix Fire is listed with Writer Beware as a publisher to watch out for.